Camps gave Dunfee the start he needed

January 01, 2006|MARK BRADFORD Tribune Staff Writer

Beau Dunfee has lived the dream. He has experienced the fantasy moment of nailing a game-winning shot and having the crowd adoration. He has been in pressure packed situations on the basketball court. He has hit 3-pointers to win games. He even had the crowd make up signs that said "Dun-3" and hearing them begin to cheer when he took his warm-ups off to enter the game. The former Penn High School player, a graduate of nine years of basketball camps and local organized summer leagues, now plays an occasional intramural game at Indiana University (Bloomington) where he is majoring in Criminal Justice. Such is the fate of 90 percent of high school athletes, campers or not. But Dunfee will tell you it isn't a bad thing for a couple of reasons. The first reason is because it is pure fun. "I saw them making up the Dun-3 sign before the game that they started holding it up," he said. "My friends would tell me that it was boring until I got into the game and everyone would start cheering when I took off my warm-up jacket. It is a really nice feeling to have people pulling for you like that. It gave me confidence and I think that a lot of basketball is confidence." The more important reason, of course, was the lesson of perseverance that Dunfee learned the hard way. You see, Dunfee always played from behind. "I was the last guy chosen for my seventh grade team," Dunfee said. "I was also the last guy chosen for my eighth grade team, one of the last guys chosen for my freshman team, and after my junior year, my coach told me I would not play very much at all my senior year." The coach who told him that he would not play much is Penn's veteran coach Dean Foster, who has a way of building character by making his players overcome obstacles through sheer perseverance. Whether Foster knew it or not, Dunfee was a master of perseverance. Not blessed with the natural speed and a jumping ability required to excel on the basketball court, Beau simply hung in there from age 4 on, playing basketball with his next door neighbor Matt Laird until all hours of the night. "I didn't really learn technique playing out in the driveway like that," Dunfee said. "I just loved to play. The camps are where I learned to keep my form. The camps were definitely a good thing." Dunfee attended the popular Bethel overnight camps as well as the Notre Dame camps and others. He said the instruction was invaluable to his ability to learn the proper way to do things on the court. "I never played AAU ball," he said. "I played in the local leagues instead. The best thing about the camps is that you could work on your form for a couple of days and, after a while the counselors get to know you, and you improve with their help. When I was a counselor at the Penn camps, I tried to do that for the campers I was responsible for." Dunfee came off the bench at Penn. He sank two free throws against Mishawaka to win the game his freshman year. His confidence grew with his first game as a senior when he scored 10 points and saw his name in the paper. "At that point, I figured everyone else is as nervous as me out there. So, even with coach Foster on my back at times, I knew I had to play my game. Confidence is knowing that you want to take that last shot, rather than pass the ball to someone else." Dunfee highlighted the point with a now-humorous example from his senior season, though it was not funny at the time. "I had one game against Washington that I went six of six in 3s in the first half and took a long 3-pointer early in the second half. Coach Foster called a timeout just for me, which is not a good thing, and spent the whole timeout telling me in no uncertain terms not to take bad shots like that, even though I had just gone six of six. I just knew that I had to keep the confidence up to take the next 3 when it came along." The best part of what high school athletics is supposed to be shines through in Dunfee. He carried a 3.2 GPA his first semester at Indiana. He knows he has already had the toughest boss he will ever have in his life in Foster, and he knows that his perseverance was rewarded by playing time. "I'm not sure confidence in yourself can be taught but I know I learned discipline through the six years of real, organized ball because the sport is really a year-round sport," Dunfee said. "I love the sport, too."